Abstract [en]

There are two sets of backgrounds to the presentation. First, it is generally acknowledged that the frameworks used in research shape the results obtained in fundamental ways. However, it is not always made clear how conceptual or theoretical frameworks are conceptualised, in what ways competing frameworks differ from one another, and what role a particular framework plays in a study. Second, research on and with mathematics teachers has since the beginning of the 1980s had a dual focus on understanding teachers’ acts and meaning-making and solving what is often referred to as the problems of implementation. However, more often than not studies are based on acquisitionist interpretations of human functioning, and the more participatory stance increasingly adopted in other lines of research in mathematics education is rarely considered.

In the first part of the session Jeppe discusses the notion of a conceptual framework and presents an approach to analysing and comparing frameworks. He presents a framework called Patterns of Participation (PoP) that adopts a participatory perspective on teaching and teacher learning, and he compares it with other lines of research conducted on and with teachers. In line with social practice theory, PoP views classroom practice as a social phenomenon, but seeks to re-centre the individual, rather than a particular practice, in the analysis. One moral of the story is that PoP offers a valuable, complementary perspective on learning to teach; another that the implementation metaphor often used in research on and with teachers does not do justice to the complexity of teaching.

In the second part of the session Charlotte introduces how she and her colleagues have adapted the Japanese method of Lesson Study (LS) to work with teachers at a school in a Copenhagen suburb. Doing so they interpret teacher learning in PoP terms. Research into how LS contributes to teachers’ professional development often seeks to identify connections between features of the method and teacher learning. However, many such studies focus on and try to document teacher learning without accounting theoretically for what is meant by the term of teacher learning. Using PoP, Charlotte will give a theoretical account of one mathematics teachers’ learning by analysing changes in his participation during the collaborative LS-processes.